Whilst the 250 riders were lucky to escape the worst wind of the day for free practice yesterday afternoon, today they endured reverse fortunes at Valencia. As in the 125cc class there was a local flavour to the top of the time sheets, as the home riders used their knowledge and experience of the track and conditions to pick up vital slipstreams that helped combat the effects of the wind.
The two Mapfre riders put on an impressive showing in this morning’s final free practice session but were unable to repeat their performance as the blustery conditions intensified in the afternoon. Álvaro Bautista experimented with a new set-up designed at giving him more rear traction on his Aprilia but the changes did not have the desired effect and he could only qualify ninth fastest.
9th Álvaro Bautista 1.37.303 (22 laps): “We tried a different setting for the afternoon because we had some traction problems this morning but it didn’t work so we went back to the original setting – unfortunately we didn’t have time to get many laps in after that. There was a lot of traffic on track at the end of the session too and I wasn’t able to improve my lap time. It means that once again we’re starting from further back than we’d like but hopefully we can have a good warm-up and gain the confidence to push hard from the start of the race. Everybody wants to win tomorrow so it will be a close race and important to stay in touch with the leaders from the start.”
